Tag: Travel

A day at the embassy

Day 54, Monday 27 Feb 2012, Bangkok

Grrrrr, lousy sleep again, so tired again today, I really wish I could just go to sleep any where and any time and sleep till I wake up or the morning – whatever is more important at the time. It is so frustrating.

Today was Myanmar visa day, so Mike and I set off soon after 8.30 to the Myanmar embassy, it is conveniently located close to the Surasak Skytrain station which is the station before Saphan Taksin, where we caught the boat yesterday, in fact the skytrain almost goes over the top of the embassy. (subtle hints for anyone thinking of a Myanmar visa)

In rush hour being a monk would be a good thing, as long as you were first on.

 The embassy opens at 9.00 and we arrived at 9.15, there was already a big queue waiting to get in.

The word on the street was to go up to a small shop just up the road to buy the visa form for a few cents so it can be filled in on the street while waiting. The shop will also photocopy the front page of your passport and take the required two passport photos (and sell you a pen) if you need all that stuff. It was a nice little business for them, and handy for tourists, so good for us travellers to support those who show initiative – and don’t try to rip us off…

It took about thirty minutes to get to the door of the visa section, luckily we were in the shade as it was hot already. Mike getting excited about getting into the air con !

Once inside we queued for another thirty minutes or so, just to get a number so we could sit and wait some more…. after almost another hour our number was called, we handed over the passport and the money and left, two hours after we arrived. Passport pick up was between 3.30 and 4.30. it was now 11.30 so Mike and I decided to catch the boat again and head up to the infamous Khao San Rd to check it out.  KSR is not infamous for its girly bars it is primarily famous as the backpacker hub of Bangkok, but for the beer guzzling, party all night type of backpacker, not the forty somethings interested in temples and stone heads type, hence we are not staying there.

This monk was obviously second on the train this morning!

KSR is a couple of streets away from the river and we stopped for lunch at one of the big backpacker cafes, I had a very nice chicken cashew and banana/coconut shake. We started to see the first signs of KSR habitués here, a few dreadlocked and tattooed teenagers drinking large bottles of cheap Anchor beer for lunch. It is definitely a more bogan area than the hostel we are staying at– and I imagine a hell of a lot noisier at night, though the day time liveliness is good. We only had an hour so it was a quick walk around.

Loved these phone boxes.

While waiting for the boat I had a wee walk around and found Phra Sumain Fort, built in the late 1700’s. As part of the defence of Bangkok –  a moat was built around the city, with fourteen forts at strategic points. Only two forts now remain – unfortunately you cannot go into them.

While reading some ones blog on applying for Myanmar visas this morning I found a reference to Bangkok’s ghost towers. Apparently there are (were) a number of unfinished and therefore deserted towers scattered around the city, they have collectively been called ghost towers and are popular with a certain type of photographer. We passed one today….

We got back to the Myanmar embassy just after 3.00 to join the (not so) happy throng waiting to collect their visas, it was stinking hot so we all gathered on the shady side of the road, away from the visa section door. At about twenty past a couple of people started to gather near the door and then there was a sudden rush to queue in the sun, luckily they opened the doors a few minutes early!

And here the story turns – well, not bad, more – frustrating.

After five minutes of queuing I got to the counter and handed over our ticket to collect our freshly visa stamped passports, and….. was advised that ours would be ready on Wednesday as we had paid for a three day turn around and not a one day…. F**K. There was not one single sign or notice of any kind inside the embassy advising on visa turnaround times or how much the visa cost, when I handed in the forms was I was told 1820 baht so that is what I handed over… Oh well, back to the hostel and hope we can get two more nights (we could). We had planned on another day in Bangkok as I want to do some shopping for travel things, insect repellent for instance and I also want to post some stuff back to New Zealand, all the clothes are clean mum – honest. Guess we get another day of sightseeing – yay more temples!

We headed back to the hostel and I managed to find a cardboard box at the local hardware store, I have tried a few places lately, so I can package up things to post – going to send the tri-pod back as it is getting heavy to lug around and I am not using it enough , along with some clothes and all the tickets and brochures and crap I have collected over the last few weeks (most of which I am sure I will toss when I finally get home !).

After a wee lie down we wandered up to the supermarket where I bought a bottle of whisky – no need to rush out of bed tomorrow and a packet of Pringles.  Though I did stop and get some satay chicken and salad for dinner on the way back to the hostel.

Another night in, blogging, emailing and drinking cheap scotch!

The music bit.

Loves Ugly Children were a Christchurch band from the late eighties to mid nineties, they released two or three great EP’s (I have two and may be missing one) and a couple of great albums and remain one of my favourite NZ bands.  Flying Nun records are apparently about to release a compilation CD, which I will look fwd to getting.  Their sound moved around a bit, but underneath the noisy/punky/thrashy sound was some great pop song writing. Simon McLaren has to be one of NZ’s best un-heralded musos, he was in The Subliminals as well, which I will do tomorrow I think. I will also confess to a wee crush on the bass player Fluff back in the day….

Sights, sites, pets and food

Day 53, Sunday 26 Feb 2012, Bangkok

Not my finest blog post, certainly not a post the day deserves, I really enjoyed the temple and the palace visits, but have run out of blogging steam tonight. Will let the pictures tell some of the story – so warning – lots of images in this post…

As I sat down to type this post and entered the date I realised that today is my second month anniversary of travelling – well done ME !  Five weeks ago I wasn’t sure I would make two months, but in a reasonable groove with it all now.

I had a good sleep last night for a change so up at a reasonable time, a quick breakfast and then out the door by eight for a day of playing tourist and visiting the Grand Palace and Wat Pho, two of the key sights in Bangkok.

We took a couple of trains to the Chao Phraya river where we waited a while to get a ferry bus up river.  The river boat was pretty full with tourists though it was a good ride upstream. Saw Wat Arun out the side of the boat which I will aim to see another day. Today was supposed to be 33 degrees and sunny, so two sights today was going to be plenty.

Wat Arun

We got off the boat near Wat Pho, and were fortunate to get there early enough to miss the worst of the tourists, though the same cannot be said for the Grand Palace later in the morning…

I loved Wat Pho, if it wasn’t so hot and there wasn’t so many people I could have spent the day there wandering (and wondering) around looking at all the stone statues, the buddhas, the stuppas and the buildings, it was just very cool.

It is the largest temple in Bangkok and its key feature is the temple of the reclining Buddha, the Buddha is 46 metres long and covered in gold leaf and was spectacular.

As you would expect there were many Buddhas!

More on Wat Pho – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Pho

After a couple of hours at Wat Pho and suffering an increasing number of tourists, we took a walk up the road through a solid line of hawker stalls to the Grand Palace.  Mike is easy to spot with the bright yellow dive bag !

The palace has a strict dress code of no shorts or open toed shoes, so it was long pants and shoes for the day. It is rigorously enforced.

The Grand Palace was started in 1782 and was the home of the Thai King and the centre of government for 150 years. The detail work, both here and at Wat Pho was extraodinary.

It was really crowded here and I kind of gave up trying to get shots without hoards of people in them.

One of the key sights of the palace is Wat Phra Kaew, the temple of the emerald Buddha. The Buddha is carved from a solid block of jade and was made in the 15th century. The temple is the most sacred Buddhist site in Thailand. I am wondering if the hitting yourself on the head with a bit of wet fruit is a tourist thing…Painting the walls of the temple.

The walls of the ordination hall are covered in panels detailing Buddhist history, the murals are quite ornate.

I was trying to get a photo of this soldier and finally gave up waiting for this group of kids who individually getting a photo taken, so I shot them too.How’s my blue bandana 🙂

Mike decided to head back to the hostel and I wanted to return to the market from yesterday to see if I could pick up some more t-shirts and see the pet section as Mike heard about it last night and heard stories of snakes and baby crocodiles. We parted at the train station and I jacked into some headphones and gave my ear drums a blast of punk rock for a while. The market was more crowded than yesterday morning and a lot hotter inside as well, I was already pretty warm after the sweltering morning so it was a rather sticky hour spent wandering around the mass of stalls. SadIy I didn’t get any more t-shirts, only found a couple I liked today and nothing was in my size !  I did find the pet area, no crocs, but I did find some small snakes, and some piglets.  There were a lot of “no photo” signs, round the snakes so I grabbed a hasty and pretty bad shot.

After a couple of hours chillin in the hostel and getting a whole load of washing done and shooting a sunset, Mike and I went out for a meal at the local hawker stalls just up the road from the hostel.

 

Making my Pad Thai..

The hostel street from the Skytrain bridge.

Auckland band Kitsch have been around since the mid nineties and still gig now and then, a great pop-punk band, they deserve way more recognition than they ever got. This song 11 11 is off the great 2002 release “love songs for romantic punks”

The worlds biggest market

Day 52, Saturday 25 Feb 2012, Bangkok

As seems to be the tradition lately I had a lousy sleep, if I  slept at all.  Up earlyish for an explore of the hostel and to see if they had free breakfast at or at least coffee –  they do.  The hostel is nice, roof garden, good views and a nice little shrine out the front. We are on the 4th floor, under the roof garden and there seems to be a good number of, mainly young, people here. It was a good choice I think, hard to choose hostels on the internet.

After breakfast I got the wireless log in and checked my email and had a message from an old friend Trudi.  I travelled Europe in a Volkswagon Kombi van in 1987 with Trudi, two of her sisters and my then wife, Deana. Trudi is Australian and is working for their immigration service out of Colombo in Sri Lanka and has come to Bangkok for the weekend with her daughter Bella. We made a plan to meet for a meal later in the day, it will be great to catch up as I have only seen Trudi a couple of times in the past twenty five years.

The plan was to go and see some of the key sites this morning and then head to one of the big malls for some aircon, lunch and for me to get a few things, zip lock bags, new board shorts, t-shirt and more USB drives being top of the list. However the hostel manager told us to go checkout Chatuchack, supposedly the worlds biggest market, which is only open on the weekends and a convenient ride away on the Skytrain – so we did…

The market is huge ! 9000 booths selling a mix of clothes, shoes, bags, shoes souvenirs, fake watches, jewellery, household items and general tat. I loved it and could have spent a day there perusing and shopping. The t-shirts were amazing, the best range I have ever seen of t-shirts that I would buy for ME to wear, I may go back tomorrow and buy a load to post to NZ, at about $5 a shirt you cannot go wrong. I did buy some new O’Neil brand boardies ($10) a t-shirt ($5) and a pair of shorts with zip pockets ($6), that I wore tonight and may be a bit small, damnit – i think it was all the beer 🙂

Not one of the shirts I would wear, but i did like it.

We walked around for a while and then stopped at a food stall for, what was an awesome, chicken noodle and cold drink lunch.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the market, especially after the Philippines, was it was entirely smoke free, even outside ! Bangkok – you are awesome.

We then caught the Skytrain to the MBK mall which was on the way back to the hostel, this mall is again huge with over 2500 shops!

But similar stuff to the market, though I did pick up another dry weight t-shirt for a couple of bucks and will send some other less useful clothes back to NZ tomorrow – though mum,  I will wash them all first time ! I sent mum a package from Miri in Malaysia with some not quite so clean articles in and it just arrived the other day, I think mum had to wait a couple of days to build the courage to open it.

On the subject of packages, earlier this week I also received an email from the shipping company in Auckland advising that the box of stuff I delivered to them before Christmas to ship to the UK (my good camera, laptop and winter clothes) finally left on Feb 24th!

 Outside the mall there was a group of what appeared to be uni students, doing something, not entirely sure what, there was a small march and some “singing” and dancing and some dressing up, I dont think all the girls were girls 🙂

After the mall we went back to the hostel and I did the usual catching up with blogs and emails and talking to friends. I also gaffer taped over the video record button on my camera as I keep accidentally pressing it and recording hours of video of the inside of the lens cap – and flattening the battery. I finally found a use for the small amount of gaffer tape I brought with me! Some bits around the hostel.The neighbours.

I caught up with Trudi and Bella at Asok station, couple of stops up the line from where I am staying, we had dinner in one of the local food places and it was the hottest noodles I have had – had to have a couple of Singha’s to wash it down. Great to catch up with Trudi and I am tempted to go to Colombo on the way over to Europe. I will see what flight options there are.

The view from Asok station.

After dinner I had a beer on the hostel roof with Mike and then called it a night.

A good first day in Bangkok, clean, easy to get around and reasonably hassle free – it was much better than I expected.

Auckland band Muckhole were around in the late nineties but I only saw them once. It is a big call but I think they are my favourite ever Auckland punk band, I mean I loved the Spelling Mistakes and the Scavengers, The Warners and a string of other bands, but these guys were cool and their records were well made and sounded great. Muckhole – Cool guy

Wall dives and sunsets

Day 58, Wednesday 22 Feb 2012, Malapascua

I will start this post with a minutes silence to remember the earthquake in Christchurch a year ago today. I have a few good friends there and thankfully none were amongst those that died or were injured. Though, all my friends were impacted by the event in a real way, through loss of job, damage to property or serious injury to a close friend. Christchurch – today our thoughts are with you.

It was nice to not have such an early start today, considering the large rum I had just before bed and the very early start I had lousy sleep last night, really hoping this is not a return to normal as I have been enjoying some good sleep.

Breakfast at a leisurely 7.30 and then meandered up to the diver shop for the 8.45 dive briefing, I have not worn shoes or sandals or even jandals for three days it has been great to just be barefoot on the sand!  There were thirteen of us on the boat but my group was a dive instructor, a trainee instructor and one other diver (he had 12 years diving) which really put me in the junior diver position – as well as the oldest diver… That I was the junior became quite obvious as the day went on!

Kids on their way to school as the dive boat is loaded – it must be so much better than walking to Green Bay Primary!

The first dive was about an hour and a half away by boat and from yesterday I learnt to bring some entertainment and secure myself a decent spot on the boat – so once on board I plugged my ears into some sounds and lay down for some faux sleeping.

The dive site at Nunez Shoal is an underwater atoll with a shear wall drop to 220 metres. The current was quite strong as we dropped into the water but the visibility was amazing. We cruised across the atoll and the lead dive master gave the sign to drop as we hit the wall drop and stared into big blue. If you have never gazed into the blue depths off the edge of a reef and looked down into the blue fading into black (I am sure there is a song title there somewhere) you will not understand how awesome it is !

We dropped down the wall to the maximum allowable depth of thirty metres and then just let the current move us along the wall for a while. There was not a HUGE amount of life on the reef, though plenty of things to look at, with some great coral, and lots of things below in the dark…. We slowly drifted up towards the top of the atoll and spotted a good array of nudi branches, moral eels and all the usual tropical fish suspects and all too soon it was over as my tank ran low. Being a noobie to the diving, and deep diving especially I suck air a lot faster than the pro’s, the instructor used half as much air as me, as we talked about the dive he commented on the amount of effort I put into fighting the current ! He also uses the same rig everyday – and for renters it takes a while to get used to even the smallest change in gear.

It was a good dive, stunning visibility  – wished I had the same on the shark dive yesterday!

From Nunez Shoal we motored over to Calangaman Island where we stopped for lunch – and a few photies.

A new definition of outside

The dive on Calangaman was similar to Nunez shoals in that we dropped onto a flat bed around 8-10 metres and then over the edge and down a wall to around 30 metres, though there was far less current on this dive.

This dive was pretty crap ! Someone used my rig from the last dive so I ended up with a tank with less air than I would have liked, given I suck more than others, this was not good. I started with 190bar rather than 220 that was in MY tank. I have also been using a fairly crap weight belt for the past three days and when I hit the water from our “giant stride” entry, the belt came off,  I managed to grab it but a 2kg weight came off and, well dropped like a 2kg weight. I got another couple of weights from the boat and guides but they were placed in the pockets of my BCD (buoyancy compensator) and I was out of whack for the whole dive, I really struggled to get buoyancy sorted and was up and down all over the show, which resulted in fast air consumption and a rough dive. This was a shame as the wall was amazing! Again – great visibility, even at 30 metres, we saw a huge tuna and swam in the biggest school of fish I have ever been in as well as the most beautiful soft coral forest. It  was such a shame to cut it short and surface 😦

The weather really packed in on the hour and a half ride back to Malapascua, with a massive downpour of rain – though no wind ! so the sea was flat calm and the rain drops on the surface looked fabulous – and not captured here at all.  it goes to show how fast the weather can change, from baking sun shine to heavy rain in an hour.

Soon after the rain stopped we were blessed with a visit by the local dolphin pod ! fantastic, we were all whooping and cheering as the dolphins frolicked –  slightly out of useful camera range !

The once deserted deck became popular again.

Finally getting back to the island for sunset.

All up my seven dives and advanced open water cert cost me about $480 NZD ! I loved diving here, and the sleeping shark was my personal highlight even though the thresher shark dive is the big one and the reason I came here in the first place.

After a good dinner in the resort and a couple of very cheap – and alcoholic cocktails I went back to my room to blog.

Tonight’s musical treat is from the last of the big three post rock bands, Texans – Explosions in the sky. I had the privilege of seeing them live just before I left New Zealand, and was blown away by their show.  I have listened to these guys for a while now and have used them for photographic inspiration a number of times, in fact a few of my old images – back when I bothered to name them, used titles stolen from EITS songs, as they have the most wonderful song titles. I guess being lyric-less the title of the song helps to invoke the image you want the music to portray.

I have been a big post rock fan for a while now, probably the genre I listen to most these days.  Oh, how tastes change, all those years of listening to punk rock and fuzzy pop and sneering at the idea of ten minute instrumental tracks, and here I am relishing a new fifteen minute opus…

Not my favourite track of theirs, but the most appropriate – six days at the bottom of the ocean

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbe8RKfaIjU

Advanced Open Water cert – day one

Day 56, Monday 20 Feb 2012, Malapascua

Considering the amount of people at the resort who are not diving it was very quiet after dark.  There are lots of Russians and Germans in this particular resort – and listening to people as I walk around, it seems the island is mainly populated with Europeans rather than native English speakers. I slept Ok, not great – tonight I medicate as up at 4.30 or something for the early morning dive to try and see thresher sharks.

I had the morning to read three chapters of the PADI adventure dive book before the review at lunch time and the first dive at two, so I had a leisurely and unexciting, breakfast at the resort – included in the room so I ate a bit. I can tell I am the only backpacker in this particular resort as I am only one who has a deck half covered in washing.

Then again, I guess not many backpackers stay in resorts !  It is great to be static for a few days as I got my sandals and bed liner washed as well as a load of clothes. I bought a small waterproof bag at the dive shop today so tomorrow I can wash my day bag as well as it is pretty feral now.

I spent the morning on my bed studying and listening to music , it was great to be inside and let my peeling back be out of a shirt as well as out of the sun.

Lunch time soon came around so I was off back to the dive shop for my first reading reviews – Peak performance buoyancy and night dives. These are basically rubber stamping exercises and are partly revenue generating tools for someone, I don’t approve really as I didn’t really ‘learn’ much but I got all the answers right…

Bounty Beach – Malapascua.

After the review we hit the water, Jules our German instructor and Moritz (that is how it sounded, and yes I think of ice cream too) a German kid, who was the other pupil. We spent an hour under water doing some basic buoyancy exercises, some of which I was awful at, but we all pass ! I love PADI –  everyone is a winner. At least  I understood the concepts, my old body and complete lack of co-ordination hindered some of the exercises –  that and maybe 1 kilo too much weight on the weightbelt for the depth we were in – 6 metres.  It was fun anyway.

After the buoyancy session is what back to land for a quick break before heading out to the night dive at lighthouse reef – the second of my skill sessions for my advanced open water cert.

One of the “boat guys”, heading out to the night dive. He had to take a dive as the mooring line from another boat got tangles around the prop.

The dive starts at sunset and finishes in the dark. The key feature of this dive is the mating mandarin fish, they are only found in a few locations so this dive was popular.

And by popular I mean chaos  under water – i hated it, far too many divers in a small spot, my lack of co-ordination and fine control just did not work here, trying to slot smoothly into a circle of proficient divers looking at small fish is damn hard ! and not enjoyable.

After watching mandarin fish make out for a while we then spent some time scoping the rest of the reef, again a lot of divers in what was a small space and fairly shallow, so all in all, not my best dive. I did see some nice sea horses which  was most cool.

After the dive it was rush back to the hotel, eat dinner and study three more chapters as up at 4.00 AM to do the deep dive and see some thresher sharks – cannot wait !

Following on from yesterdays post-rock gem from Jakob, I introduce Mono, a Japanese band that have been around for since 1999. They recently played in Auckland and for some reason that I cannot recall now I did not go and see them. I have this album “one more step and you die” on vinyl and it got utterly hammered in my last few days at home. I particularly love this track – Com(?),  ignore the lack of video, turn the volume up and close your eyes  – warning, it does get noisy…

Malapascua

Day 55, Sunday 19 Feb 2012, Cebu – Malapascua.

Today I am off to Malapascua Island, which is about thirty minutes by boat off the northern tip of Cebu Island, so I need to catch a bus to Maya to get the boat. Have heard the road is rough !

Another reasonable sleep, this is almost becoming habit forming ! up at 7.00 and packed ready to go, got a coffee in the hotel restaurant but skipped breakfast as I don’t like to eat and drink too much before a long bus ride, you just never know! I got a cab to the long distance North Terminal and as we approached we saw the Maya bus leaving so I jumped on board, pack and all. For about five minutes I had a seat for the pack too…

I caught one of the local non-air-conned buses, it was only a four ride so I had heaps of time and I knew the bus would stop every few minutes  and it was about time I went local. With all the windows open it was as cool as the air-con busses anyway, except when we were stopped waiting in a bus terminal about half way, then it got really warm! The journey was long, though not too uncomfortable considering I had my pack on my lap the whole way, the scenery was interesting with a good mix of stunning beach views, small villages and hill towns.

The Philippines are a lot cleaner and tidier than Malaysia, though appear to be significantly poorer, you can see where infrastructure had been built  20-30 years ago before the worst of the corruption set in and things stated to decline. The bus arrived at the wharf in Maya just after 12.00 and I was soon joined by a Canadian couple and a couple of Canadians and we waited on the bangka (outrigger boat) for it to fill up before departing to the island.

I had my accommodation booked at Ocean Vida resort for four nights, but none of the others had anything arranged. I got talking to the two Canadian guys, Mike and Matt and Mike is considering Myanmar as well so we are going to catch up later and discuss a possible joint trip. Once checked in I spent a couple of hours wandering around bits of the island and looking for a good deal on dives. The island is (I am led to believe) about four and half kms in circumference, though that doesn’t seem right, feels bigger. On Bounty Beach there are a number of resorts and the place has a diving focus so lots of dive shops. The Island has a large indigenous population as well and I got rather lost wandering around the interior as it is a warren of twisty sand paths. There is a massive contrast between the local village and the resorts that back onto them though and there are a lot of armed guards walking around the resort areas. Then again there are armed guards all over the places I have been in the Philippines – I got searched by an armed guard going into the mall yesterday!

One of the primary dives at Malapascua, and the reason for its popularity, is an early morning (5.00 am !) dive to see thresher sharks, one of the few places in the world to do this. Unfortunately they are generally found around the 25-30 metre depth and my open water cert only allows dives to 18 metres. After some pondering and counting of beans I have decided to do a PADI Advanced Open Water Cert. The course includes five dives, one of which is a deep dive, which can be the thresher shark dive. It costs a bit more than individual dives but means I get my advanced cert and I can pretty much dive anywhere. So tomorrow I do my first dive, which will be visually dull, but probably fun as I learn a bit more about buoyancy. Tonight I have to study !

I caught up with Mike and Matt over an early dinner at my hotel bar, they are staying somewhere else, and then I went and snapped a couple of sunset shots and went to my room to internet, listen to music and study ! Early night and lucky no TV. My room is pretty cool by the way 🙂

Going to start educating you music illiterates, if I remember, each post with some musical awesomeness, mostly from New Zealand, but whatever takes my fancy and likely to be what I am listening too. Will start with a NZ band.

Jakob, from Napier. One of the worlds best instrumental post-rock bands, they have been around for just over 10 years but do not release a lot of material, recording a much anticipated new album at the moment. This track “I’m on your side” is off the wonderful subset of sets album – my favourite Jakob recording.

El Nido – Diving !

Day 50, Wednesday 15 Feb, El Nidoc- Diving !

After the island hopping tours, diving is the number one activity in El Nido. With numerous limestone islands and white sand beaches scattered around the bay there are a vast number of wall, reef and beach dives to be done – and are a number of companies willing to take your money and get you diving. For no specific reason I chose Palawan Divers.

I overslept a little, so up at 7.30 and no breakfast after yesterdays near debacle, grabbed a bottle of water on the way out the door as a bit dehydrated from last night, though not feeling hungover. I got to the dive shop on time for 8 and hung round for thirty pointless minutes before gathering that they had not written my booking up on the board. Luckily there was only a couple of people going today, or I would have been left dry and  furious !

Fortunately that was the only dodgy part to the day and the rest of the organisation and dive management practises were good, and the dive masters were fun too. We had three dives scheduled for the day at three different sites, but for good reason we only ended up diving in two of those places.

The first dive was at a place called Populcan forest , as you can see from the location photo it is right near a vertical cliff face, so it was a boat entry. In Borneo we dived off proper dive boats, but here we were diving off the traditional bangka outrigger, which introduced a new set of challenges as they are quite narrow – and there is a lot of gear !

Once in the water we dropped down the wall to the bottom at around 20 metres, slightly deeper than my licence “allowed”, but the sea doesn’t always obey PADI rules! The forest is a reef dive through some interesting coral, the visibility was OK, a lot of plankton in the water – which proved to be an awesome thing ! There was a reasonable amount of sea life, not a huge amount and the coral was Ok.

I was thinking that this was no where near as good as the diving we did in Borneo when AJ our lead dive master started banging on his tank with a metal rod (used for pointing out things of interest) I was right behind him and looked to where he was pointing and approaching us in the gloom was a massive whale shark !! I don’t think awesome can describe how exciting this was – fortunately I knew whale sharks are very safe only eating plankton. The shark passed about 7-8 metres from us and we followed it for as long as we could keep up. It was a real wow moment – and another trip highlight.

The whale sharks can grow up to 20 metres long, so this one, at around 5 metres was a juvenile. They are common in Feb / March in some locations in the Philippines but apparently quite rare in El Nido waters, AJ has logged over 1000 dives here and has never seen one, so we were all extraordinary lucky – and got some major cudos back in the shop at the end of the day !

We carried on with our dive and were heading back to the boat when I spotted the shark coming back our way, I grabbed AJ’s flipper and we all stopped and watched it pass by again. After a few under water hi-fives we surfaced to much excitement and got back on the boat for a very animated hour between dives

The crew proposed we flag dive site two and do the second dive here, but dive the wall rather than the forest, with the hope of seeing the whale shark again, us customers were very happy with this option. After an hours break we donned gear and dived the wall, staying around 10-15 metres where we saw the shark the last time. Alas, though it was a great dive we did not see the shark again.

We motored over to Dilumucad Island (well the dive was called that, no idea what the island was called, assuming the same !) and had a nice lunch on the white sand beach. The sun was so bright I could not see the screen on the back of the camera so missing the front of the boat – I should have brought the GF1 with the view finder! But you get the picture – its pretty nice here !

The dive site was at the end of this point, yeah I know – doing it tough 🙂

After the required number of hours break (and no – I didn’t work it out myself – fun dives with professional dive masters – are supposed to be fun!) we dived a sloping reef. This was definitely the best dive site of the day, some great coral and lots and lots of small fish life, tropical fish tank stuff, but lots of it and all around you !  We had quite a bit of sun on this dive so visibility was very good –  and I found a decent size turtle, which we followed for a while.

I think of all the dives I have done I was the best in the water on this dive, my buoyancy was about right for the whole dive – this is quite hard to achieve !!! I also used very little air as well, which meant I moved efficiently in the water, so very pleased. It is so much easier underwater when you have the basics right!

El  Nido from the sea

After the dives it was back to the shop to do log books (great thing with tour dives is they clean the gear !) and then to the hostel for beer, dinner and an early night.

Another good day !

El Nido – tour B

Day 49, Tuesday 14 Feb (Valentines day !), El Nido

Once the racket from the restaurant stopped and the Russians stopped screaming at each in the street I actually got some good sleep- untill the power went off at 6 AM and the room started to heat up. I got out of bed and got myself organised for my island hopping and snorkelling tour which left the guesthouse at 9.00. I got to the cafe at 8 and ordered breakfast, waited, waited, got my coffee, waited waited, got my shake, went and did a couple of chores, at 8.55 my omelette arrived, at 8.56 the tour people arrived… gulped breakfast, which was quite nice and ran out the door.

The main tourism activity in El Nido is island tours, there are four tours to do, imaginatively named A, B, C and D, with multiple operators doing each tour, the Palawan government has fixed the cost of the tours so no real need to shop around.  I chose tour B as it was supposed to have some good snorkelling, though I suspect  they all do…

We left on the Bangka at 9.00, myself a young couple from Melbourne, an older Italian guy with his Philippine GF and four Norwegians. I pretty much hung with the Norwegians all day, but chatted to the Aussies over lunch – they had similar music taste to me! Alex the Norwegian was as keen on doing as much snorkelling as possible, which suited me as that was why I was there.

The first stop was on an island that I cannot remember its name, the snorkelling was great ! I took the small camera so I could use it underwater, it is rated to 3 metres and managed to survive the day OK. I was actually reasonably happy with some of the shots, though it is quite hard to take photos while underwater and holding your breath – and the damn fish don’t stay still ! some of the coral was pretty cool too !

From there we went to Snake Island, and walked up a small hill to look down on the sand bar – supposed to look like a snake, the water was so clear here, but unable to swim due to jellyfish.

 

Next stop was Cudugnan Cave, the cave was cool, but nothing compared to some of the caves I have seen ! 

We had a snorkel here as well, I used flippers to get some depth and didn’t take the camera, a very good reef here, so enjoyable snorkel. 

I meant to pack a t-shirt to swim in this morning, but totally forgot, so got quite burnt on this snorkel, Alex and I were out for quite a while.  A great lunch was served here and then on to Cathedral Cave. We were not allowed into the cave here unfortunately, but would have been an awesome place to snorkel. I really like the way the sea has eaten away at the limestone here, a lot of the small islets are like this, it is most extraordinary.

Finally we stopped at Pinabuyutan Island for more snorkelling for those of us who wanted to snorkel I cannot believe people didnt! I got a few reasonable shots here, and got Alex to grab a couple of me as well.

The Bangka got us back to the hostel for six PM, so a good long day and well worth the $40 or so it cost. The snorkelling was really good and a very promising sign for the diving tomorrow!

I had dinner with three of the people I met in Puerto Princessa, and then French Vanessa and I  went for a few drinks at the local music bar Balay tubay, where I drank too much considering I was diving in the morning ! But Vodka tonics did make the covers band sound so much better –  even that bloody awful Hotel California was survivable – and it is my most hated song.

El Nido

Day 48, Monday 13 Feb, Puerto Princesa to  el Nido

I am writing this post in the semi-dark, two days later in el Nido after a few vodka tonics in a local bar and a couple of beers with dinner, don’t expect Hemingway – I am not that drunk !, but short and possibly incoherent post.

Up early after a lousy sleep, the van to el Nido was supposed to arrive between 7 and 7.30 but was uber early at 6.45 and I was only gazing sadly into my coffee at that stage, so mad rush to get out the door.

Van ride was Ok, the road was not as bad as I expected for the first five hours and I had a wee bit of leg room, though I think our driver was trying to set a record for a van ride with 13 tourists, lets just say he drove like me and used all available road space! It did feel safe though.  We stopped a couple of times, the last stop was at Taytay, where we picked up a woman who squeezed in next to me and went to sleep on my shoulder. The concrete road ended here, the new roads in Palawan are made from foot thick concrete, as the tarseal just falls apart too quickly.

The van arrived in El Nido, in the north of Palawan just before 1 PM. My Finnish friend and I were immediately set upon my tricycle drivers and it took a while to extract ourselves from the melee and consult on trying to find accommodation. We took a tricycle out to where one of his countrymen was staying and they had one bed left which he took. I got the tricycle back to the centre of town, checked out a couple of places on the way and ended up getting a room for the night at the “Alternative” a guesthouse on the bay – and I mean ON, under the deck is THE bay. It was actually my original first choice, but it is more guesthouse than hostel – but it had a good bar and an excellent restaurant which was a plus, the minus was it was not a great backpacker hang out, so not many people to chat too.

El Nido is located on the Bacuit Bay and was initially made famous for its diving, and beauty, by Jacques Cousteau back in the 70’s. Scattered throughout the bay are numerous limestone islands. Tourism hasn’t really hit the town in a big ugly way yet, though tourism is its main money earner, so there is still a good feel and a rustic charm to the place – for instance there is no electricity in town from 6.00 am to 2.00pm !

I wandered around town for a bit and booked myself an island hopping/snorkelling tour for tomorrow and a dive trip on Wednesday. The view from my hostel deck.

Walkabout

They are filming the final in the “Bourne” series in El Nido, watch out for this boat in the movie…

Boat (bangka) building – Philippine style…

El NidoLots of pawn shops on Palawan, I did not see these in Malaysia. My hostel was just up the road.

Can you tell I used two cameras for these photos !

I had a very nice vegetarian meal and a couple of San Miguels and went to bed, where I listened to really, truely awful music from the restaurant until almost 1.00!